Custom Metrics

Overview

See also: Measuring Business Impact: How to Calculate Earned Media Value (EMV) with Custom Metrics and Custom Metrics: Best Practices Guide

Introducing Custom Metrics, a powerful way for Premium Analytics customers to create, manage, and apply their own formulas across post-level reporting. Users can create custom metrics using basic mathematical operations (+, -, ×, ÷, and parentheses) combined with existing post-level metrics. These custom metrics can be network-specific or cross-network.

Custom Metrics use formulas defined at the network level to support network-specific metrics while enabling cross-network calculations. Users can define up to 100 custom metrics per customer account (split between 50 account-level metrics shared across all groups and 50 group-level metrics).

This feature provides user-defined custom metrics to empower teams to track the KPIs that matter most to their organization, enabling users to create formulas using existing post-level metrics and apply them across their reporting workflows.

Availability

Reports

• Post Performance Report

My Reports Widgets

• Post Summary
• Post Analysis
• Post Performance
• Tag Summary
• Engagements by Tag
• Impressions by Tag
• Video Views by Tag 

How to Create a Custom Metric

In settings, select "Custom Metrics” under the “Reporting and Listening Section”

From here you can see:

• The name of existing custom metrics
• Groups they are shared with
• When they were last updated
• Which networks they apply to
• The option to edit the metric
  • Note: When editing an existing metric:
    • A warning appears that tells you changes will immediately affect all historical and future values
    • Users should carefully consider the impact of formula changes on existing reports
• The option to delete the metric
  • Note: When a metric is deleted:
    • It is removed from all reporting locations
    • Reports or widgets that only showed this metric will display an empty state
    • Reports or widgets with multiple metrics will simply remove the deleted metric

Click on “Create Metric”

Give a name and a description of the metric you are creating. Metric names must be unique.

Decide the format of the metric:

• Numeric - does not support division. If you want to divide, you will have to multiply by a decimal point (e.g., multiply by 0.001 to divide by 1000).
• Percentage - allows for division and multiplication by 100

The following post-level metrics are available for custom metric formulas:

Cross-Network Metrics:

• Impressions, Organic Impressions, Reach
• Reactions, Likes, Comments, Post Shares, Quotes, Reposts, Saves
• Post Link Clicks, Other Post Clicks, Post Clicks (All)
• Video Views, Organic Video Views

Network-Specific Metrics:

• Poll Votes (LinkedIn)
• Story metrics (Instagram): Tap Backs, Tap Forward, Exits, Replies

Note: Available metrics vary by network.

Choose the networks you want to add to your custom metric.

Click Create

Note: If there are issues in the formula, you will be prompted to make changes before saving.

Viewing Custom Metrics in Reporting

In My Reports Widgets

1. Navigate to My Reports

2. Open Configuration Options, Select Metrics, and add your Custom Metric

In the Post Performance Report

1. Navigate to Post Performance Report

2. If using the Grid View, Select Customize Sorting Metrics in the Sort By dropdown and select your Custom Metric

3.  If using the Table View, use the Metrics Menu and add your Custom Metric

How Sprout Calculates Custom Metrics

Calculations are performed at the individual post level first. The formula is applied to each item, and those results are then totaled. This ensures constants (like "metric + 15") and multipliers (like "metric * 5") correctly weigh each item before the final sum.

For example: If you had a calculation set as 15 + Likes, the 15 is added to each post's Likes count individually, then all results are summed.

Custom Metrics FAQs

Can I create a custom Engagement Rate (per Reach) metric for LinkedIn?

No. Due to network API limitations, LinkedIn does not provide post-level Reach data for LinkedIn Company posts. This will mean Reach is not an available metric for custom metric calculations for LinkedIn. We would advise using Engagement Rate per Impression for LinkedIn post-level reporting, as this metric will be available for both LinkedIn Company Pages and LinkedIn Personal Profiles.